Thursday, 19 June 2014

Dogecoin integration - VoidSpace vs Pay2Win

How will VoidSpace implement Dogecoin?

We will be creating an experimental MMO server that allows you to spawn a new character at the cost of
some Dogecoins. The dogecoins you pay in will be randomly distributed throughout the game world as a mineable resource. Which means that you can actually make money by playing the game. Not only will you be able to mine Dogecoins in-game, but you will be able to trade them with other players, or even attack players and loot their coins.

We will also be allowing for custom servers to be created where all players who join the server have to pay a buy-in in Dogecoins, and the player who survives gets to keep the coins at the end of the game.

Finally, the standard MMO server configuration will allow players to simply deposit coins into their characters so they can buy things from other players in-game. With this configuration, players won't need to mine the coins first. There will be some limitations on this configuration however. Players won't be able to remove coins from their character whenever they want. There will be a period once the coins are acquired that they will need to stay in the character's inventory. This is to keep players from stealing coins, and then removing them from the game so they cannot be taken back. Coins will also only be able to be removed in batches. For example, if the batch size is 1000 coins, and a player has 1200 coins in his inventory, he will only be able to "cash out" 1000 coins. The purpose of this is to keep at least a small amount of coins on the character available to be stolen/looted by other players. (Keep in mind that 1000 doge is currently worth about 40 cents)

Ok fine. But why Dogecoin?

Dogecoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency that enables you to easily send money online. Think of it as "the internet currency." Dogecoin is based on the same code that the wildly successful Bitcoin was created from, with some added tweaks to make transactions much faster. We have decided to go with Dogecoin for our virtual in-game currency for a number of reasons:

Dogecoin was founded on the idea that a digital currency should be fun and friendly, and we believe this ideal fits in very well for an in-game currency.

Unlike Bitcoin, Dogecoin's value is much less than a dollar, which makes it better suited for a game currency. It just feels better to get paid 1000 Dogecoins rather than 0.001 Bitcoins.

Dogecoin transactions are much faster than Bitcoin (~8x faster) and Litecoin (~2.5x faster). This means that putting money into your account or sending money from your account will be much faster.

Dogecoin has support from many currency exchanges so you can easily convert Doge into the currency of your own country. However, we would encourage you to check out Dogecoin services online that will accept Dogecoin directly!

Even though Dogecoin will be directly used as the in-game currency for VoidSpace, we will still accept other crypto-currencies and standard currencies. The crypto-currencies we will be supporting are as follows:

Dogecoin

Bitcoin

Litecoin

Vertcoin

Quarkcoin

Auroracoin

Darkcoin

Maxcoin

Mintcoin

I'm concerned that VoidSpace is just a Pay 2 Win game

Our funding model is partially based on the fees we receive for micro-transactions between players. The alternative would likely have to be a monthly subscription for the game, which players would probably hate. A few people see the player to player Real Money Transaction (RMT) as a Pay-to-Win (P2W) system and I have a handful of reasons why this isn't the problem they think it is.

Generally, P2W is associated with games where players can buy things from the game developer to give their characters more power in the game world. This is primarily what gets people mad about P2W as it clearly makes it impossible to play the game "fairly". VoidSpace doesn't actually do this and all transactions happen between actual players.

If you're still concerned about P2W happening in a player-to-player RMT system, then I would say that this is the case for ALL MMOs. People will sell on Ebay, directly on Paypal.. it will happen no matter what the TOS states. Making it easier for players to perform RMT only makes it safer.

Regular games suffer more from a P2W scenario in general. In most games, players are all in close quarters either logically or physically (virtual-physical). For example, Diablo 3 had the global auction house, this has the effect of having every player in the world in the same room and whoever has the most money, gets the best stuff. VoidSpace relies on "localities" that will occur naturally. Players cannot even communicate over long distances let alone trade on a global scale. You must find what you want before you can have it.

What it comes down it is this: players don't like it when they feel like they have to pay in order to be matched with the other players in the game. But this is the reality of a game that is based on reality. There are many more ways that a player can get more power than you and having more money than the other guy is only one of many. Any given player could be playing beside people who:

A) already have an existing fan base on the internetB) have been playing for a long time and have amassed a lot of powerC) have lucked out and created a technology that makes them much more powerful than you

VoidSpace is a truly organic world and this kind of distribution of power will occur in many ways for many different reasons, not just because someone has the most money.

If a player wants to get away from all that, in VoidSpace, he can. The world is going to be enormous and at any point a player can pick up and find a remote place to live, far from what he deems as a hostile and un-fun environment.

This is true, but what really separates coins from anything else of value in the universe? There is a lot of griefer protection in place, especially if you group up with other players. You will also have ample opportunity to steal the coins, that were stolen from you, back - coins cannot be removed from the game immediately after they've been traded.